If this happened on the train I would probably be complaining quite vociferously. As it is, I lie between the Brian Taylor and Calum Cashley in Iain Dale’s top 40 Scottish political blogs, as voted for by readers.

More to the point, this list is definitive proof that this blog is the second best non-aligned non-MSM Scottish political blog (behind Ideas of Civilisation). I always knew it. (Any way to make the result sound more impressive, huh?)

Overall this blog is 16th, which is a dramatic fall of fourteen places from my previous position in this list. Still, I got off lightly. The person who was number 1 in that previous poll is nowhere to be seen in the top 40 now. Just goes to show what a fickle world this popularity malarkey can be.

I’m actually quite pleased for this blog to be up there still in 16th place given the increasingly sporadic nature of my blogging. I certainly can’t complain about the blogs above mine in the list, nor a few below mine. So thanks if you voted!

Another point to note is that Scottish Roundup is number 31 (in the week that it celebrates its 100th roundup too). Not bad for a blog that has next to no original content. Scottish Roundup is run by me, but it is a thoroughly collaborative effort with many people chipping in. So if you have contributed to Scottish Roundup before, give yourself a pat on the back.

For a number of years in the past the SNP has used the slogan “Scotland’s Party”. You often hear them distinguish themselves from other parties by highlighting the fact that the other parties are “run from London” and so on and so forth. It is inherent in the nationalist ideology that there is a distinctively “Scottish” point of view. As the main nationalist party in Scotland, the SNP has to make sure it always represents this “Scottish” point of view.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a political party to claim to represent an entire group of people. For instance, the Labour Party would claim to represent working class people (or, in today’s language, “Hard Working British Families”). But it’s one thing to try to represent a particular sub-set of the population. It is quite another to try and represent an entire nation.

Of course, there is no “Scottish” point of view. However, the SNP often do a fairly good job of convincing people that there is. They will often tell you they are the only party standing up for Scotland’s interests, and I often think that some people south of the border really do believe that what the SNP says is an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion.

The danger for the SNP, though, is that they always have to make sure that they actually do provide an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion. This will often means that the SNP ends up doing what is popular rather than what is right (this probably explains why many of the SNP’s policies are so populist). A lot of the time, what is popular and what is right will be aligned. But what if they are not?

The thing about Alex Salmond’s interview was not that he said “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s policies so much.” The problem was that he said “Scotland didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic politics so much.”

The interview with Iain Dale in Total Politics sees Mr Salmond being his usual presumptuous self. He sees himself as speaking for Scotland. In fact, he is only qualified to speak for himself or, at the very most, for the SNP.

I suspect that if Alex Salmond simply said, “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic policies”, you wouldn’t have seen a fraction of the outrage. There might have been a few “Tartan Tory” jibes, but that would have been about it.

It was the fact that he was attempting to speak for Scotland — and he got it wrong. If you are going to be arrogant enough to speak for the whole country, you need to make sure your finger is right on the pulse. Make one little slip-up and you end up offending most of the country.

Last year, quite incredibly, this blog was named as the number 2 Scottish political blog thanks to Grant Thoms of Tartan Hero fame. Some will say that this blog is indeed a load of number 2, so the position is pretty apt. But I would be amazed if I repeated the feat this year.

So vote for me now!

As a few other bloggers have done, I will reveal my top ten political blogs. If nothing else, it fills a bit of space here. You might also be interested in my recent post on ten excellent blogs.

It’s not easy choosing just ten great blogs — and choosing the order of them is even harder. But you probably know that. I tend to go through love / hate (or at least ‘love / indifferent’) relationships with most blogs. No doubt this list would look very different if I compiled it next week.

1. Stumbling and Mumbling
2. SNP Tactical Voting
3. UK Polling Report
4. Political Betting
5. Mr Eugenides
6. J. Arthur MacNumpty
7. Ideas of Civilisation
8. Holyrood Chronicles
9. Freedom and Whisky
10. Liberal England